Work Opportunities in France
Under the Titre Emploi Entreprise (TEE) system companies such as tourist-trade restaurants and wine-growers which need to take on seasonal workers can offload the time-consuming administrative work of calculating social security contributions to one of three offices in Bordeaux, Lyon or Paris, provided the total number of days worked by any one employee does not exceed 100 in the calendar year. Consult www.letee.fr or phone 0 800 00 83 83.
A recent report, commissioned by the government, recommended a flexible new work contract which would replace the two main types of employment contracts (the CDD and CDI contracts) for non-seasonal employees and a new two-year contract should be introduced in the autumn of 2005.
Every year some 300,000 vacancies remain unfilled. Many of these are in the building trade, despite the increased attention that has been given to technical studies in schools in recent years. Illegal immigrants who have the necessary skills are often illegally employed and exploited, without any insurance cover, as they cannot officially be put on company payrolls.
All these factors are behind the difficulties many people encounter in finding stable employment. Left and right-wing governments have successively introduced premium payments and allowances for limited periods to encourage companies to take on new permanent staff. A fundamental revision of regulations and a new approach to motivate the unemployed is really required for long-term positive results and the new social cohesion plan put forward by the Minister of Employment will attempt to tackle the problem. Visit www.travail.gouv.fr/english.
The laws covering paid professional training for salaried employees and the registered unemployed are receiving their first major review since 1971. Full details in French of the new laws, the choices they give employees and employers and the different types of training programmes available are set out under the same website under la formation professionnelle .
